In 2016, Ireland took back the Somme “into our self–understanding and identity”, Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin Michael Jackson has said.
Honouring loss during the year
exposed “the bankruptcy of a memory that seeks to exclude. And such a
version of memory has had a long, tenacious history in Ireland,” he
said.
“The freedom to remember and the
grace to grieve have touched households and townlands, streets and
suburbs, the length and breadth of Ireland,” he said.
Complimenting 1916 commemorative
ceremonies across the island, he said “the history of the State has been
told, most pertinently and most poignantly, around the founding events
and their complexity. It is acknowledged widely that it has been done
with objectivity and with respect. Children and women have not been
forgotten in this account of happenings.”
In a homily at Christ Church
Cathedral he noted “genuine attempts have been made to point us to a
fresh expression of ourselves into the future that will open as a new
century for Irish self–understanding, as well as a new year, in 2017.”
He felt all of this “speaks
hopefully for continuing cordial relations between the two parts of
Ireland whose separateness cannot but be accentuated structurally once
the United Kingdom invokes Article 50 and leaves the European Union.
“It is good to have bonds of
affection in place within Ireland ahead of this event, whatever form it
takes, because it means that post-2016 we have a shared memory of
publicly documented expressions of respect and friendship already in
place. And memory in Ireland is a key component in our identity.”
Shock
The Catholic Archbishop of Dublin
Diarmuid Martin has spoken of his shock at seeing so many people queuing
for food in the city before Christmas.
“We have to ask why it is that
progress for good is not shared and that today inequalities flourish.
All of us were stunned even here in our own city to find thousands of
people queuing for basic food at the Capuchin and other food centres,
while within a few kilometres others were queuing for luxury goods,” he
said.
Speaking in the Pro Cathedral he
described as “sick” and “evil” those individuals “who murder openly on
our streets” and those “who instruct and pay them.”
Dublin “is marked by homelessness
but also indeed for many by hopelessness,” he said. As believers “we
cannot be satisfied simply to celebrate Christmas like an anaesthetic
which hides pain for a moment or like an eruption of spending which ends
up leaving us only with a hangover of emptiness,” he said.
The Catholic primate Archbishop Eamon Martin noted how “the people of Ireland continue to be extremely generous to charitable agencies.”
Speaking at St Patrick’s Cathedral Armagh, he said he was “heartened by the courageous work of Trócaire as it engages with its partners in Syria and Iraq to help traumatised victims and survivors of conflict”.
He sent “good wishes this Christmas to the brave Irish UN peacekeepers in Lebanon
and other troubled places, and I salute the tremendous humanitarian
work of our navy which has helped to rescue thousands of migrants from
the Mediterranean.
“I thank God for the outreach of members of the St Vincent de Paul Society, the Fr Peter McVerry Trust, the Simon Community and many others who go out of their way to raise awareness and directly support people who have nowhere to call home.”
Where 2017 was concerned he
encouraged people “to consider offering some of your time and gifts to
help a charitable outreach or voluntary organisation”.